Spelt from Sybil's Leaves
by pipenerd
Summary: The Dark Lord muses about the changes Harry has brought about in his life. Pure romantic mush of a drabble, really. Consider it like getting a box of truffles for Valentine’s day. Slash: LV/HP. Oneshot.


**Title:** Spelt from Sybil's Leaves

**Author:** Pipenerd/ Mizstorge (2008)

**Dedication:** To **Shaitanah**. Belated birthday wishes to a dear friend and marvelous writer!

**Word Count:** About 865

**Genres:** AU, Romance

**Warnings:** Slash

**My Beta**: hobtheknife

**Disclaimer:** J.K. Rowling created and owns Harry Potter. (looks in mirror: Nope, not her.) Rights are held by JKR, Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic. Warner Brothers and goodness knows who else. If the fans had copyright, the series would be much more interesting! Not profiting, just enjoying.

**Author's Notes: **This was inspired by** Gabzie's **art** While You Were Sleeping **(the link to this image is in my profile)

"_Our tale, O our oracle!"_

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Spelt From Sybil's Leaves, 1918.

Dark, tousled hair lies on the pillow next to mine. I have to lean close, my Harry, to hear the gentle sound of your breathing, to see the rise and fall of your shoulder as you sleep.

It is unsettling how your presence in my life has changed everything. I never slept with anyone before you. Sex was a necessary function, as essential as eating and as quickly forgotten. Something about you transforms the act, causes me to linger, to reassess the connection between touch and reaction. I cherish the way you look at me, by turns demanding or enraptured; I am humbled by the tumult of emotion that accompanies the waves of delight that surge through my body. When I reach out to hold you close in the moments before sleep, I feel a primal satisfaction in claiming something so precious as mine.

I never imagined that a wizard might feel comforted by my presence and yet you curl up by my side in prefect contentment. I can sense your presence in my dreams and feel your body pressing closer in the night as you unconsciously try to erase the boundaries between us. That is what drew us together: the realisation that neither of us could be whole or content without the other, the growing suspicion that one could not survive were the other to die. And yet, however close the connection or intense the pleasure we share, a doubt mars this tranquillity: while I can possess your body and share your thoughts, you remain a separate entity, a being in your own right that I can never completely control or own. You have _chosen_ to be with me; you might just as easily change your mind and choose someone or something else, leaving me bereft. You are teaching me the futility of dominion and the necessity of uncertainty and I find this new philosophy difficult to accept.

I have never belonged to anyone before. I have always been the one to claim and take, to accept allegiance and to reject the unworthy. Now, I strive to meet your expectations, for my own are no longer high enough. My goals have changed and my plans have been altered by the fact of your presence. I am uncharacteristically at a loss to understand how this happened. I intended to kill you, Harry, protecting myself by fulfilling a prophecy but, as Laius discovered, it is difficult to evade destiny. Instead, you subverted my intention, insinuated yourself in my existence by ensnaring a portion of my soul.

I have disparaged love all my life. It was another name for manipulation, helplessness and slavery. You have made me doubt this, as so much else. You are re-forging me, and I fear and hope in equal measure that whatever I am becoming is both acceptable to me and pleasing to you. The one thing I cannot tolerate in myself is weakness, but I know you do not demand that of me; you admire strength too much.

I have never had an equal before, my Harry. I do not think it has occurred to you how difficult it is for me to share power, or to defer to you, to admit that in some cases your knowledge is superior or that you are better suited by experience.

And yet, in spite of this perpetual state of uncertainty, I feel as though together we have passed beyond the point of no return. When I watch you sleeping like this, I am suffused with the indescribable happiness you have brought to my life. I think you are happy, too, although it sometimes occurs to me that all this is strange to you as well. I wonder whether, in spite of your innate abhorrence of structure and strategy, this period of constant reinvention might not be just as uncomfortable for you as it is for me.

When confronted by one of the frequent paradoxes brought about by our bond, you often shrug with a maddening lack of concern and smile. "We'll just wing it," you say. Tonight, I begin to suspect that perhaps your response isn't, after all, some Seeker's contingent game plan but an admission of surrender to the strange and powerful unseen forces at work in our lives.

I remember the day I taught you to fly and how you took to it so easily. You told me that you really didn't understand _how_ you had done it; you just abandoned yourself to the power of gravity. Perhaps this "winging it" is your way of expressing that same sort of confidence in the force you call 'love'.

The only power I have ever believed in that strongly is the power of magic. I have wielded its strength, tested its limits and put my trust in its ability to save my life in desperate circumstances. Even so, magic is merely a tool. I have never before found any power or being to which I have been willing to relinquish control, to allow it to guide my life and determine my future.

But I admit that now, at this moment, I am willing to finally place that sort of faith in you.

**  
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